My job is to make images and leave the decision-making and conclusion-draw ing to other people.

I know a lot of people who have weird specialties that are not taught in schools; they're things that you learn in life.

When I was four, I was a kind of sky worshipper. I would look at the sky, and I wanted to evaporate into the sky - I loved the sky. I loved looking at the trees, just because they touched the sky.

. . . I wrote a letter to Thomas Pynchon asking, Can I have your permission to try to make an [adaptation] of your book? And I had no idea that he would answer me, because he's pretty elusive. But he did send a letter back that said, Yes, you can do that - as long as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo. I thought, That's an interesting way of saying No.

Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.

It's good to take a longer view and think, what would I really like to do if I had no limitations whatsoever?

I am a New Yorker, one; I'm an artist, two; I'm a woman, three.